The Fur Coat
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Based on "Madensky Square" by Eva Ibbotson. What was Nini thinking when she received Daniel's gift?


The Fur Coat

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Madensky Square

Copyright: Eva Ibbotson

Nini's first impulse, when she unpacked the Russian sable coat Daniel Frankenheimer had sent her, was to run her hands along the soft black fur and try it on. Seeing herself in the mirror, bare feet, thick eyebrows, beaky nose and all, she really felt almost beautiful. It made her want to cry, and that made her furious. It was unacceptable that an American banker with sliding socks and nondescript eyes should still have the power to break her heart.

_Who do you think I am,_ she wanted to scream at him, _some slut you can pay off with expensive presents?_

She imagines the indignant flash of his eyes, gray-green-golden, and the argument they would be having if he were here right now. But when she whirls around towards the door, there is no one standing there except Frau Susanna, watching her with an expression on her sweet, motherly face which she very much feared was pity.

It took her days to get up the nerve to read Daniel's letter. She meant to tear it to pieces, but a certain paragraph caught her eye, and once she had read that, she collapsed onto her bed beneath her anarchy posters and went right on reading.

"_I expect you think it's criminal of me to spend untold amounts of money on a genuine sable coat when people are starving - " _She snorted._ "- and perhaps it is. But look at it this way: until we find a more just method of distributing our resources, we may as well keep the present economy running as smoothly as we can, so that the people who made that coat, for instance, can keep their jobs. Besides, if you don't care for it, you can always resell it and donate the money to some worthy cause."_

She frowned at the page. Why did he have to be so logical? And why, against all logic, was she touched by the fact that he didn't expect her to keep the coat? Perhaps because none of her other male "benefactors" over the years, even the most generous, would never even have thought of such a thing.

But then, she remembered, Daniel _was_ generous. Not only with his money; God knows that was easy for a capitalist like himself. Generous with his time, his laughter, his enthusiasm; he could turn pebbles into gemstones just by looking at them, turn a group of children into warriors and explorers. That was Daniel. She was not surprised this time when tears came to her eyes.

_I gave you this coat,_ he wrote,_ because it represents everything I love about you: your style, your passion, your love for the finer things in life and your desire to be unique. The moment I saw it in the shop window, I thought of you: how you would run your strong, elegant hands along the fur, hold it up to your cheek, close your eyes and simply feel it. Its beauty would be second only to yours. _

"_For the last time, Nini, I'm asking you to reconsider. I will not apologize for introducing you to Heini Fischer, but I do apologive, most sincerely, for having cast a doubt on the beliefs by which you live. But think about it. Can the girl I fell in love with, the one who came to comfort me after the incident at the lake have it in her to murder her fellow human beings? Is this really the way you want to fight for a better world?" _

She crumpled the paper viciously in her hands, prepared to throw it across the room … and paused. Something in her anger did not feel right.

As she remembered the child with no legs, smiling up at Daniel from his hospital bed and thanking him for the fire engine, she could not seem to feel much besides pity for the boy, contempt for her own comrades' thoughtless, destructive behavior, and a hearty dose of shame towards herself for following them. Her resentment towards Daniel, for practically rubbing her nose in the consequences of that grand assassination plot, was all but gone. _If I'd read about the kid in the paper,_ she thought, _or heard about him in the street … would that really have been different? Wouldn't I have left the movement anyhow?_

She hoped that, her childhood and adolescence aside, she had not become so callous as to remain within a movement which allowed things like this to happen. Not after several years with Frau Susanna, her coffee and bread and silk and laughter; her warm-hearted admonitions for wearing high-heeled boots to protest marches and her matter-of-fact compassion after Daniel's departure. No one should be callous who worked for a woman like this.

Perhaps she could give the proceeds from the coat to Heini Fischer's unemployed parents. If she ever saw Daniel again, she would like to tell him about that … along with a great many other things, the first of which would be an apology.

_Blood shed for the revolution is blood shed for humanity_, read one of the posters above her bed.

With a single fluid gesture, she tore it down.


End file.
